Daniel Horowitz – Conservative Reviewhttps://www.conservativereview.com
Fri, 24 May 2019 18:37:54 -0400en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.10https://storage.googleapis.com/conservativereview/2018/01/cropped-cropped-cr_favicon_512x512-150x150.pngDaniel Horowitz – Conservative Reviewhttps://www.conservativereview.com
3232When will we stop fighting over fake fights?https://omny.fm/shows/the-conservative-conscience-with-daniel-horowitz-1/when-will-we-stop-fighting-over-fake-fights-ep-418#new_tab
Fri, 24 May 2019 15:30:33 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44289The post When will we stop fighting over fake fights? appeared first on Conservative Review.
]]>The post When will we stop fighting over fake fights? appeared first on Conservative Review.
]]>Trump should veto bad spending bills – like this onehttps://www.conservativereview.com/news/trump-veto-bad-spending-bills-like-one/
Fri, 24 May 2019 14:50:44 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44280President Trump recognizes that Congress spends too much money on wasteful programs and not enough on border security. Yet he can’t seem to extend his Twitter opposition to their proposals to a full-fledged veto threat. By agreeing to sign every swampy budget bill, including even supplemental spending with no clear “must pass” deadline, he is […]

]]>President Trump recognizes that Congress spends too much money on wasteful programs and not enough on border security. Yet he can’t seem to extend his Twitter opposition to their proposals to a full-fledged veto threat. By agreeing to sign every swampy budget bill, including even supplemental spending with no clear “must pass” deadline, he is giving away any leverage he might ever have to enact his priorities, not just until 2020, but even for the four years thereafter of potential Republican trifecta control of government.

Headed into this week, Democrats demanded $19 billion in more spending, including another Puerto Rico bailout, with no funding for the biggest crisis of all – the border. President Trump vigorously criticized the Puerto Rico bailout. His own budget calls for much lower spending levels, and he demanded $4.3 billion in border funding. So Republican leaders, led by Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., did what they typically do, which is “split the difference” and “compromise” … by giving Democrats everything they want on wasteful programs and allocating nothing on border security. They wagered that Trump’s opposition would soften the minute they agree to pass the bill. They were right. Rather than vetoing the bill, the president promised to sign it.

The U.S. Senate has just approved a 19 Billion Dollar Disaster Relief Bill, with my total approval. Great!

Just eight Senate Republicans opposed the bill on Thursday. Today it is headed back to the House, where Democrats are trying to pass it without a recorded vote. (Update: Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas, refused unanimous consent in the House, forcing a recorded vote and delaying the bill until after Congress returns from the holiday recess.)

The excuses are always the same. For the first two years, it was the 60-vote threshold in the Senate. Now it’s the Pelosi-controlled House. For the second term it will be the 60-vote threshold in the Senate again. But everyone is missing the point. The president’s ironclad commitment to backing his initial opposition with an irrevocable veto threat will change the arc of debate over these bills and give him leverage to at least secure some of his priorities, even as we spend ourselves into oblivion.

God forbid should we ever oppose a new disaster spending bill after $117.5 billion of disaster spending on top of record base spending for all the agencies receiving money in this bill, including those the president promised to eliminate altogether. Forget about standing behind the promise of no more money for Puerto Rico until the province makes systemic reforms. The president could at least have stood by his demand that if Democrats want more spending for their pet HUD projects under the guise of a disaster, then we need spending for the biggest disaster of all at the border. Trump’s request didn’t even include wall money.

This comes a day after the Republican-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee, led by Sen. James Inhofe, rebuffed the president’s request for $3.6 billion in border infrastructure funding in military construction accounts. Amidst the endless spending for social work in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Niger, Libya, and Somalia, there is nothing for what is quintessentially national defense. But that is all because the president is scared of the four-letter word – VETO.

It’s hard to imagine when Trump will find greater leverage and a more auspicious opportunity again. The reality is that even with Republicans in charge of the House, every single budget legislation that passed in 2017-2018 was a Democrat bill without the proper border security priorities. That is because Republicans knew that if they passed the bill, the president would never veto it. They were right. That same pattern will hold, even in the best-case scenario of the outcome in 2020, unless the president steps up his veto game.

But this case was even worse. When it comes to full government funding bills or debt ceiling increases, the president has already been convinced that no matter the strength of his arguments, he must give the bipartisan congressional swamp whatever it wants for fear of the dreaded government shutdown or so-called default on the debt. But in this case, while both parties set an arbitrary deadline to pass it before Memorial Day, there was nothing special about that deadline. There would be no shutdown of any sort.

The president could easily have leveraged the holiday weekend to give speech after speech on how our Border Patrol has essentially been shut down permanently and on how this spending bill must reopen the most vital aspects of our national defense. He could have used the time to hammer home the cascading effects of illegal immigration and cartel control of the border on the security of this country.

On June 4, 1787, during the debate over the structure of the president’s check on Congress, James Wilson predicted that the veto would be so powerful that it would “seldom” be used. Indeed, this was not because of the weakness of the veto but because he thought Congress “would know that such a power existed, and would refrain from such laws, as it would be sure to defeat.” Imagine if Senate Republican leaders knew that all their mischief is destined for certain defeat? Sadly, they know now that their bad spending bills and disregard for the border are destined for certain success the minute they are proposed.

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]]>46 cases of MUMPS in county with highest illegal immigrant traffichttps://www.conservativereview.com/news/46-cases-mumps-county-highest-illegal-immigrant-traffic/
Thu, 23 May 2019 18:42:53 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44236Hidalgo County, Texas, is ground zero for the most illegal aliens coming in among all places along the southwestern border. It is also experiencing an outbreak of mumps, with 46 reported cases countywide since March, an unprecedented number for any U.S. county. Yet you would never know about this if you rely on the national […]

]]>Hidalgo County, Texas, is ground zero for the most illegal aliens coming in among all places along the southwestern border. It is also experiencing an outbreak of mumps, with 46 reported cases countywide since March, an unprecedented number for any U.S. county. Yet you would never know about this if you rely on the national media beat reporters at the border to report on it. Why? Because it is inconceivable that this unprecedented outbreak is not coming from the influx of extremely vulnerable illegal aliens from source countries that are experiencing a mumps epidemic.

On Monday, the Hidalgo County health department announced that the tally of mumps cases had risen to 46.

@HidalgoCounty 46 confirmed mumps cases – Consult Dr if an MMR Booster would be indicated – Wash hands w/soap & water,, cover mouth when coughing, do not share drinks, If symptomatic consult Dr for testing Stay home away from work & school as directed by Dr @TexasDSHS

Amazingly, Olivarez is quoted in the local media as saying that in no way is this epidemic coming from illegal immigrants. No sir. It’s likely coming from people traveling to other states around Easter time, according to Olivarez.

So let’s get this straight: We have people coming in the largest numbers ever “from countries where poverty and disease are rampant,” and large numbers of them “may have never seen a doctor, received immunizations, or lived in sanitary conditions,” according to testimony from acting DHS Secretary Kevin McAleenan. They are coming under the worst conditions in “close quarters on trains and buses that smugglers procure for moving them through Mexico,” which “can hasten the spread of communicable diseases,” according to testimony from Randy Howe, head of operations for CBP’s Office of Field Operations.

In addition to the threat of diseases from Central Americans, there are now individuals coming from places in Africa that have Ebola outbreaks, such as Congo. More than 1,110 people have died of Ebola, there and the situation has spiraled out of control. I asked CBP if they have a special protocol for not releasing those coming from these African countries effected by Ebola and if they require mandatory screening and holding for an incubation period or if they just treat them if they exhibit symptoms at the moment of arrival or request medical attention. A spokeswoman for CBP responded that “U.S. Customs and Border Protection and public health officials monitor the health of people coming into the U.S. and there have been no encounters of Ebola along the southwest border.”

The CBP official further reiterated that at ports of entry, they have worked closely with the CDC to screen out potential threats:

“CBP and the CDC have closely coordinated to develop policies, procedures, and protocols to identify travelers at all ports of entry who may potentially be infected with communicable diseases and to minimize the risk to the traveling public. These procedures have been utilized collaboratively by both agencies on a number of occasions with positive results. CBP personnel review all travelers entering the United States for general overt signs of illnesses (visual observation, questioning, and notification to CDC as appropriate) at all U.S. ports of entry, including all federal inspection service areas at U.S. airports that service international flights, land-border crossings and seaports.”

However, there appears to be no confirmation that those coming between ports of entry as families to benefit from catch-and-release are subjected to mandatory screening and incubation based on country of origin. Indeed, a Homeland Security advisory council report observed that there clearly is no long-term screening to ensure those who don’t currently exhibit symptoms are incubated in order “to anticipate some of the potential infectious disease complications that can be found in this population of children.”

The council recommends facilities with exam rooms “and equipment designed to prevent the transmission of communicable diseases.” It further recommends the issuance of “a medical ‘passport’ for children exiting the custody of RPCs that identifies significant medical problems as well as any immunizations provided before their release, which would be beneficial to destination communities and their public health systems and avoid the very high risk of these children becoming lost to monitoring.” That is currently not being done.

Clearly, when it comes to diseases like tuberculosis, scabies, and mumps, it’s very unlikely that Americans are protected from their spreading. Aaron Hull, chief patrol agent of the El Paso sector, divulged in April that Customs and Border Protection is increasingly “caring for more and more sick people, because a lot of these aliens coming in are carrying contagious health conditions, things like chicken pox, scabies, tuberculosis, lice.”

Yuma County Sheriff Leon Wilmot is definitely seeing this problem in his area. “They have come across a number of different diseases, from scabies to chicken pox to measles to mumps … they have encountered that here,” said the veteran border sheriff on my podcast yesterday. “Unfortunately, there have been some Border Patrol agents that have been exposed to these types of health issues. I know there were two Border Patrol agents here locally who contracted scabies from having to have contact with some of these folks. It is an issue that is being monitored by our local health department, but medical [personnel] can only catch what they are able to catch. And when you are running through so many folks, its obviously an issue when they are not showing signs when they are in the custody of BP for just 24 hours.”

Yuma is the third busiest human smuggling sector at the southwest border.

]]>The burden of open borders falling on local officialshttps://omny.fm/shows/the-conservative-conscience-with-daniel-horowitz-1/the-burden-of-open-borders-falling-on-local-offici#new_tab
Thu, 23 May 2019 16:18:23 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44225The post The burden of open borders falling on local officials appeared first on Conservative Review.
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]]>MO Sen. Josh Hawley fights another liberal judicial nominee against his own partyhttps://www.conservativereview.com/news/mo-sen-josh-hawley-fights-another-liberal-judicial-nominee-party/
Thu, 23 May 2019 14:31:01 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44214Republicans have essentially ceded the legislative agenda for the remainder of this term and will not push a single important issue other than nominating judges. Even on the judicial front, they will not fight back against judicial power-grabs and the practice of judicial supremacy. Rather they will focus on “getting our guys” on the super-legislative […]

]]>Republicans have essentially ceded the legislative agenda for the remainder of this term and will not push a single important issue other than nominating judges. Even on the judicial front, they will not fight back against judicial power-grabs and the practice of judicial supremacy. Rather they will focus on “getting our guys” on the super-legislative bench of the judiciary. As such, one would expect that at least all the nominees of this administration would be ironclad originalists who interpret the Constitution as it was adopted in 1789. Right?

Well, nothing says “interpret the Constitution as it was adopted in 1789” like state-sanctioned discrimination against those who believe a marriage is, well, a marriage. Michael Bogren, a First Amendment lawyer from Michigan, has been nominated to serve as a federal judge for the Western District of Michigan. He believes in the latest trend of governments discriminating against Catholic adoption agencies or businesses because, in his estimation, “discriminators need not apply.”

Government contracts should be open to all citizens, and many citizens are allowed to bring discrimination lawsuits based on nonsensical and frivolous claims. But somehow when cities like East Lansing openly say they will not do business with a farmer who doesn’t host gay weddings on his property, that is perfectly fine.

Steve Tennes was kicked out of the Lansing farmers’ market for his religious beliefs and is now suing in the very federal court where Bogren seeks a judgeship. Bogren represented East Lansing and wrote a brief comparing government’s termination of contracts with Tennes to the government barring work with the KKK, a group that discriminates based on immutable traits. “The message isn’t Catholics need not apply,” Bogren said. “The message is discriminators need not apply … This is not about religion. This not about speech.”

Senator Josh Hawley confronted Bogren with those comments this week at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Bogren reiterated that “the point I was trying to make was that religious beliefs trying to justify discrimination – if extended to sexual orientation, which the city of East Lansing protects – could be used to try to justify any other sort of discrimination, whether it be gender or race.”

Folks, that is the whole enchilada of what we are fighting in the courts today. Governments are codifying the homosexual – and now, the transgender – agenda into civil rights, thereby trampling the foundational freedom of religion in this country. Once we accede to the point that sexual behavior is just like race, that would mean that even private businesses who are not seeking government work but just merely want to be left alone would also be forced to directly serve homosexual weddings.

Bogren said very clearly, “I stand by those comparisons” of religious beliefs against gay marriage to discriminating based on race and gender.

Hawley concluded, “I am shocked by the statements that I read in your briefs; I’m shocked by this kind of language. I’m particularly shocked by it in light of the Supreme Court’s clear teaching that this kind of animus and these kind of hateful comparisons are out of step with the protections of our law.” Referring to the landmark Surpeme Court ruling last year, Hawley said, “The Masterpiece Cakeshop case turned on these issues, it turned on this kind of animus. The fact that you stand by these comments is extraordinary to me.”

It’s also quite extraordinary that so few Republicans bother to even check whether these nominees, whether Supreme Court picks or lower court picks, even comport with our basic legal principles on issues like religious liberty, life, marriage, and sovereignty. Hawley previously expressed concern about another lower court pick because she had some socially liberal beliefs. Hawley was roundly criticized by Republican groups for holding up a Trump nominee.

Whether it’s Mitt Romney, Susan Collins, or Tim Scott, there are plenty of Republicans who are willing to challenge Trump’s nominees from the Left, but nobody aside from Hawley seems to be aggressively vetting Trump’s nominees to see if all of them are true originalists.

If the entire purpose of the GOP controlling the Senate is to confirm judicial nominees, shouldn’t we at least see if they are worth fighting for?

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]]>Where do we escape for our asylum?https://omny.fm/shows/the-conservative-conscience-with-daniel-horowitz-1/where-do-we-escape-for-our-asylum-ep-416#new_tab
Wed, 22 May 2019 16:01:41 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44166The post Where do we escape for our asylum? appeared first on Conservative Review.
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]]>The frontline effects of the open border don’t stay at the border. They’re all around DChttps://www.conservativereview.com/news/frontline-effects-open-border-dont-stay-border-theyre-around-dc/
Wed, 22 May 2019 15:23:55 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44162What happens at the border doesn’t stay at the border. Elite East Coast politicians might not care about Arizona ranchers, but 95 percent of illegal immigrants traipsing through the ranchers’ land don’t stay in Arizona. Most of them go to the East Coast. The hardest-hit areas? Right around the nation’s capital. Fredrick, Maryland, used to […]

Fredrick, Maryland, used to be a quiet town that was shielded from the crime problems plaguing the Baltimore-Washington metro area for years. Sitting at the foothills in the mountainous western part of the state, it was a sort of asylum for those who wanted to escape the Baltimore-area problems when I was growing up in central Maryland. Now, it is a hotbed for MS-13 activity, thanks to our open border.

Late last week, the Washington, D.C., medical examiner confirmed the identity of the mutilated body found near the Potomac River inside the nation’s capital. It was that of Eberson Guerra-Sanchez, a 16-year-old student at Tuscarora High School in Frederick. Police suspect this was an MS-13 killing because the area was marked with the gang’s colors, but the search for the killers is still ongoing. This coincides with last week’s gang-style butchering of a 14-year-old girl with a bat and a machete in Prince George’s County, a suburb on the other side of D.C., allegedly by illegal aliens who were recipients of catch-and-release and shielded by a sanctuary government.

According to census data, in 2000, just 7.3 percent of the city of Frederick was foreign-born. As of 2017, that number is 18.7 percent for this once rural town, and the numbers are growing wildly with the surge in Central Americans. Nearly a quarter of residents speak a language other than English at home. With this change has come a surge in transnational gangs.

PG County, on the other side of the nation’s capital, has become a hub of MS-13 activity ever since the arrival of more Central American teens in 2014. In March, PG County officials arrested five MS-13 members for stabbing a gang rival 100 times and setting the body on fire. Three of them were resettled as UACs.

Last year, the Washington Post reported on an “overwhelmingly Hispanic school in Prince George’s County,” Maryland, where MS-13 would “sell drugs, draw gang graffiti and aggressively recruit students recently arrived from Central America, according to more than two dozen teachers, parents and students.” It was so bad that “most of those interviewed asked not to be identified for fear of losing their jobs or being targeted by MS-13.”

The Post also did a report on an illegal immigrant woman from Guatemala who has to pay ransom to MS-13 not to be killed and how she felt she was living with the very elements she fled. She had been living in the U.S. for 10 years, but things changed around the DACA surge when “MS-13 was on the rebound, fueled by fresh recruits from an unprecedented wave of almost 200,000 unaccompanied minors from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.”

The Post was referring to the “unprecedented” wave of Central Americans in 2014. Well, the current wave, if left unchecked, will likely bring in over one million.

According to the census, PG County’s foreign-born population has surged from 13.8 percent in 2000 to 28 percent in 2017. The population of non-Mexican Hispanics has more than tripled since 2000. The number of Central Americans quadrupled just from 2000 to 2010. With the illegal aliens from Central America has come explosive gang growth.

Fairfax County, Virginia, has a similar story. Its population of non-Mexican Hispanics has almost doubled over the past two decades. Prince William County to the south, which has a growing MS-13 problem in Woodbridge, saw its overall foreign-born population double, while the Salvadoran population grew more than sixfold just from the 2000 to the 2010 census.

“Where you see immigrant populations, you will likely see the gang,” said Asiano Davila, the FBI’s program manager for the Transnational Gang Task Force, in an interview with WTOP news in 2017. Fairfax County Police Detective Ken Compher is quoted in the same article as saying, “We’re getting kids from other countries who have killed people down there, who have committed murders, who are coming here and recruiting. And they’re coming here with that one goal — the gangs are sending them here.”

But it’s more than just those who are known gang members in Central America. Today’s harmless 12-year-old coming over the border is often tomorrow’s new gang recruit in our own cities. Former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who used to be a U.S. attorney in Maryland, said at an MS-13 roundtable last May that in addition to letting in those who are already gang members, “we’re also letting people in who are vulnerable.”

“What we found in recent years is a resurgence of MS-13 in Maryland, in the D.C. area, and it was fueled by illegal immigration and particularly by the challenge of unaccompanied minor children,” said Rosenstein in the presence of the president in Long Island last year. “Many of these alien children, who have no parents, no family structure — we’re releasing them into communities where they’re vulnerable to recruitment by MS-13,” said Rosenstein.

As I reported earlier this month, fewer than ten percent of those sponsoring the UACs have legal status themselves, and most UACs are self-smuggled by families rather than being “victims of a severe form of trafficking,” which is the requirement of the statute for eligibility for the resettlement program.

Last year, in a report on MS-13 for the Center for Immigration Studies, Jessica Vaughan referred to “one MS-13 clique leader in Frederick, Md., who had received a DACA work permit … reportedly was told by gang leaders in El Salvador to take advantage of the lenient policies on UACs to bring in new recruits, knowing that they would be allowed to resettle in the area with few questions asked.” Which gives you a sense of what the surge in Central American teens has done to this area. “Several of these unaccompanied minors now have been arrested and incarcerated for various crimes, including a vicious random attack on a sheriff’s deputy in 2015,” warned Vaughan, who herself used to live in Maryland.

Unfortunately, rather than shutting down this program, the administration is requesting from Congress another $2.7 billion for HHS to continue completing the criminal conspiracy to help illegal aliens smuggle volatile Central American teens into the country and have them be treated like legal permanent residents.

Tragically, an endless number of illegal aliens as well as Americas will die as a result of this perfect storm. Yet, there will likely be very few body counts publicized of those killed by MS-13 members resettled as family units or UACs, though there are accounts of those who die of dehydration and illness in ICE custody resulting from making the dangerous trip north. Sadly, our political leaders don’t need to go to the border to see the effect of their policies. They can step right outside their offices in the D.C. area.

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]]>Two illegal immigrant Central American teens charged with murder were previously released by Maryland sanctuaryhttps://www.conservativereview.com/news/two-illegal-immigrant-central-american-teens-charged-murder-previously-released-maryland-sanctuary/
Tue, 21 May 2019 19:40:38 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44112There seems to be a full-court press over every single illegal alien who dies of natural causes after making the perilous journey over our border. Yet there is almost no coverage even of the most high-profile murders committed by illegal aliens, including by the “children” coming through our border from Central America and being released […]

]]>There seems to be a full-court press over every single illegal alien who dies of natural causes after making the perilous journey over our border. Yet there is almost no coverage even of the most high-profile murders committed by illegal aliens, including by the “children” coming through our border from Central America and being released into our communities.

Last week, three teens, including two confirmed illegal aliens from El Salvador, were charged with first-degree murder in Prince George’s County, Maryland, for allegedly butchering a 14-year-old with a bat and machete. Josue Rafael Fuentes-Ponce, 16, and Joel Ernesto Escobar, 17, both gang members, were arrested on May 16 by PG County police for the murder of 14-year-old Ariana Funes-Diaz in a wooded area in Riverdale. Shockingly, a 14-year-old girl, Cynthia Hernandez-Nucamendi, was also arrested for the murder last week.

Gang-style murders committed by illegal aliens have become very common both on the Maryland and Virginia sides of Washington D.C., as these counties are saturated with illegal aliens from Central America who are often connected to MS-13. Yet nobody in the local media reported on their immigration status until now.

In response to a media request from CR last week regarding the immigration status of those charged, ICE has now confirmed that the two male suspects were both illegal aliens from El Salvador who were released into the country – one as part of a family unit and one as an unaccompanied alien child. It turns out both were arrested for attempted murder almost exactly a year ago, and both were released by the PG County criminal justice system in defiance of an ICE detainer.

ICE has confirmed that Josue Rafael Fuentes-Ponce was first apprehended as part a family unit in Texas on December 23, 2015. “They were ultimately paroled into the U.S. pending the outcome of the immigration case,” said ICE spokeswoman Justine Whelan in a statement. An immigration judge ordered Fuentes removed in absentia on March 16, 2017, but like so many of them, it was too late. He had already disappeared.

Escobar had a parallel experience, except that because his family smuggled him in alone, he was resettled as an unaccompanied alien child. “On Aug. 23, 2016, immigration officials encountered unlawfully present El Salvadoran national Joel Ernesto Escobar as an unaccompanied juvenile near McAllen, Texas. Escobar was transferred to the custody of the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and later released to a family member in the Washington, D.C. area,” said Whelan.

The fact that, once again, illegal aliens released into our country as part of a smuggling operation were allowed to remain and allegedly commit murder would be tragic enough, but that is not the end of the story.

Both Fuentes and Escobar were charged with attempted murder almost exactly one year ago in PG County. ICE previously lodged a detainer against each of them on May 11, 2018, with the Prince George’s County Detention Center. At the time, Fuentes was arrested “for attempted first-degree murder and related charges” and Escobar was arrested “for attempted first-degree murder, attempted second-degree murder, conspiracy to commit murder, participation in gang activity and other related charges,” according to Whelan.

In the case of Fuentes, the case was remanded to juvenile court, after which “the Maryland Department of Juvenile Services failed to honor that detainer and Fuentes was released without notification to ICE.” In the case of Escobar, he was released by county police “without notification to ICE.” Escobar was convicted of conspiracy to commit robbery on March 15, 2019, still without any notification to ICE.

PG County does not allow ICE in its jails, so ICE has no way of knowing when these individuals are released.

It wasn’t until their high-profile arrest on May 16 that ICE was again aware of their whereabouts, now with another teenager dead. “As law enforcement officers, we must continue to serve and protect the American public and act in the interest of public safety first,” said Baltimore Field Office Director Diane Witte in a statement. “These individuals had demonstrated violent criminal behavior before, and because they were released in spite of the lawful detainer, they were afforded an opportunity to take a life.”

I’ve reported on numerous cases where illegal aliens arrested for murder had previously been released after charges of DUI, assault, or drug trafficking. But to ignore an ICE detainer after an initial charge of attempted murder is a new level for local sanctuaries thumbing their noses at federal immigration officials. Attempted murder is hard to dismiss as “low-level” charges. One has to wonder, if they are not honoring detainers on attempted murder charges and are not notifying ICE of the arrestees’ release, how many other murders, robberies, assaults, drunk driving incidents, and gang crimes could have been avoided? It’s quite evident that these crimes would certainly not impel local authorities to cooperate with ICE if an attempted murder charge is not enough.

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]]>Top veteran immigration officer: Why is the government not shutting down the flow at the border?https://omny.fm/shows/the-conservative-conscience-with-daniel-horowitz-1/top-veteran-immigration-officer-why-is-government#new_tab
Tue, 21 May 2019 16:21:05 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44091The post Top veteran immigration officer: Why is the government not shutting down the flow at the border? appeared first on Conservative Review.
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]]>Influencing elections? Ha — Russians are coming right to our borderhttps://www.conservativereview.com/news/influencing-elections-ha-russians-are-coming-right-to-our-border/
Tue, 21 May 2019 15:23:58 +0000https://www.conservativereview.com/?p=44085Our political system has been paralyzed over the past year with the incessant news cycle on Russian influence in our elections. Anything and everything related to Mueller’s Russia probe has forced our border crisis to take a back seat to the implied threat of “the Russians are coming.” Well, according to border experts who’ve spoken […]

]]>Our political system has been paralyzed over the past year with the incessant news cycle on Russian influence in our elections. Anything and everything related to Mueller’s Russia probe has forced our border crisis to take a back seat to the implied threat of “the Russians are coming.” Well, according to border experts who’ve spoken with CR, Russians are showing up on our southern border. Will the broader media and the politicians now take an interest in the border?

Jaeson Jones, a retired captain from the Texas Department of Public Safety’s Intelligence and Counterterrorism Division, warns that the cartels in charge of the plazas at the border are now helping to smuggle Russians into south Texas. “In the last few weeks in south Texas, Border Patrol agents have apprehended several Russians being smuggled between the ports of entry by the Gulf Cartel,” said Jones in an exclusive interview with CR.

Although Jones is retired from his counter-cartel work for Texas law enforcement, he is in regular contact with border officials and cartel informants and continues to train local, federal, and state law enforcement on the latest trends, tradecraft, and capabilities of the cartels. Jones is hearing that the smugglers are strategically using the masses of Central Americans showing up in the Rio Grande Valley, often up to 2,000 per day, to carefully bring over Russians in small, unassuming numbers.

“The Gulf Cartel is currently staging small groups of two and three Russians throughout the Reynosa plaza to be smuggled into the country illegally,” said Jones, who used to manage the daily operations of the Texas Rangers’ Border Security Operations Center (BSOC). “This type of smuggling activity is utilized to move what the cartel deems high-value people. We see this activity often when smuggling special interest aliens (SIAs). Those are people who come from a country with a terrorism nexus. This is due to their ability to pay more money to be crossed illegally.”

Current government officials working on border issues have confirmed a similar trend of aliens coming from countries of terrorism concern or threats of espionage. Last week, I interviewed Jack Staton, special agent in charge of Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) El Paso division. He observed that there is nothing unique about Central Americans using the loopholes and lapse in coverage at the border. He noted that because we’re not able to detain these people, they’re incentivized to come from all over the world, including Russia.

“Along with the continued flow, you’re going to have every nationality do it. It’s not just going to be Central Americans. We’ve seen non-Central American family units also coming up. We’ve seen families from Turkey and from Brazil. In our area here, we’ve seen Turkish nationals coming in, we’ve seen individuals from Angola, the Congo, we’ve seen individuals from Russia. … We’ve seen a lot of Brazilians coming in; many of the Brazilians are coming in as families, as are Turkish families. We’ve also seen a major influx of Cubans coming into our area here.”

Russia has a robust presence in Latin America. Border agents are tied down at the border, and the secondary checkpoints in the El Paso sector, which includes all of New Mexico, are completely unmanned. This means that any suspicious immigration activity, such as people coming from non-traditional migrant countries up the main highways, will go unchecked.

Staton noted that the secondary checkpoints were actually set up more for immigration enforcement than for drugs. “They’re not narcotics checkpoints. That’s a secondary function of them, in the sense that people have to stop for an immigration inspection. And then, all of a sudden, agents might find narcotics.”

In a recent interview with Staton’s counterpart at the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) in El Paso, Kyle Williamson, he also expressed concern that countries of security concern are exploiting the vulnerabilities. When I asked Williamson whether he thinks there is a looming threat from terrorists coming into the country with the knowledge that our agents are tied down at the border and that the secondary checkpoints remain unmanned, he responded emphatically, “Yes, it’s definitely a threat.”

“Let’s just put it this way, the cartels are an international organization. It’s a real threat, it’s a prevalent threat, and they do have their associations with groups like Hezbollah, with Afghans, and with radical terrorist organizations,” warned Williamson, who also served in the DEA’s offices in the Middle East overseeing narco-terrorism enforcement. “What that does is effectively move those borders right up to the United States. Those cartels link the borders. Just like they use their resources, their technology, their criminal enterprise to conduct criminal activities, they can use those resources to assist terrorists as well.”

Williamson sees no reason why national security should be any less affected by open borders than vulnerability to drug trafficking. “When you look at a terrorist organization, obviously they capitalize on chaos. When your borders are in chaos, the same way the drug traffickers exploit that to move the drugs through while border agents are moved away from the field, the terrorists have the same knowledge how to exploit the situation.” So what are Russians being moved in for?

Sheriff David Black of Otero County, which has two checkpoints now unmanned thanks to the surge in migration, was concerned that the highways coming up from El Paso into his county may serve as a conduit for national security threats. “If someone wants to get in to do harm to this country, there is nothing stopping them whatsoever,” said the sheriff. “They don’t even have to risk the hardship of coming over the rugged Mesa area with a load and a gallon of water when they can come straight up our highway without anyone stopping them.”

It’s no wonder the Supreme Court has said, “The right to [exclude aliens] stems not alone from legislative power but is inherent in the executive power to control the foreign affairs of the nation (Knauff v. Shaughnessy, 1950). The vulnerability of a broken asylum system has a cascading effect on numerous diplomatic and security issues not just with Mexico but with many adversaries in the world. If the president’s power over immigration isn’t enough to justify shutting down asylum processing at the border, perhaps the ubiquitous fear of “Russian interference” will spawn the political actors to act.

Editor’s note: The fifth paragraph has been updated to note that Mr. Staton was criticizing our inability to detain illegal border-crossers.

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